Green development model needed for Asean

Representatives from major Asean cities discuss how to lessen the impact of climate change by rethinking urban development.

Asean cities need a new concept of development and planning to create urbanisation for sustainability to cope with climate change challenges, a regional forum on climate change and cities concluded.

Speakers at the "Greening of Asean cities", an Asean+6 city forum on climate change held yesterday in Bangkok, agreed the current development methods of large cities in the region were not efficient enough.

Tay Kheng Soon, of the Holcim Foundation, said planning concepts and methods were "outmoded" as they were based on western concepts during the Industrial Revolution that were not relevant to tropical Asia.

Tay, also a professor of the University of Singapore, recommended the Asean countries change their views. He said the city and the countryside must be viewed as one space not two.

"Cities cannot function without their countryside," he said.

He suggested urbanising the countryside and ruralising the urban centres so that towns, villages and central cities can be linked by informational and communication technologies (ICT), while farming can be introduced in cities through appropriate zoning.  

Tay also recommended that urban development should pay more importance on creating a database of floor space in order to plan properly, so that floor space and buildings can be deployed where best suited.

He strongly recommended that Bangkok and other big cities build up a "2-pipe system" - which would allow wastewater to be easily treated and reused.

Tay was one of the distinguished delegates at the forum that allowed mayors and representatives of cities including Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Albay, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Beijing, Delhi and Fukuoka to discuss and share ideas on how they can lessen the impact of climate change and what cities can do to adjust to changes it may bring.

Hosted by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), the forum closed with the Bangkok Declaration on Cities and Climate Change.

Under the declaration, the deployment of energy efficient and clean technologies in key urban economic sectors, including buildings, industrial equipment and processes, vehicles and appliances would be promoted.

Meanwhile, partnerships with the media, civil society and the private sector to address climate change adaptation within the framework of sustainable development would be established.

As cities are main sources of massive greenhouse gas emissions, the collaboration across the major cities in the region was needed to encourage people to become more aware of the importance of the quality of the environment, said Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general of Asean, via the VDO presentation, as Surin was in Burma.

Tay said that lifestyles and consumption can also be changed to reduce the need to travel and transport commodities thereby reducing energy and pollution. He said architects should use energy efficient local materials including rammed earth bricks and bamboo.

He said the centralisation of urbanisation had created the myth of modern architecture, in which plate glass, aluminium and concrete had become symbols of modernisation. This had caused buildings to account for 60 per cent of greenhouse gases.

"This is a bad myth because it increased pollution, heat gain and therefore more air-conditioning which means more energy and therefore more greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

Lawrence Vale, of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came up with a similar idea. He said a holistic approach was needed for urban development to take cities out of their dilemma between capturing the trend towards large-projects and making cities environmentally exemplary.

"The challenge is to make sure the climate change problem is not separated from the development agenda," he said.

For Vale, urban liveability was under threat because cities were unprepared for climate change.

He praised the five-year action plan (2007-2012) of the BMA to fight global warming as a good example of big cities to mitigate and adapt themselves to climate change.

Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin said the action plan was ultimately aimed at reducing 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

Various activities have been created and implemented under the plan's five approaches: improvement of the transportation system, promotion of renewable energy, energy conservation and building retrofit, solid waste and wastewater management, and the expansion of greenhouse areas.

Fukuoka aims to be hydrogen leader

Fukuoka

If the city government of Japan's Fukuoka Prefecture has its way, the 5 million residents could have the cleanest and most advanced energy made available to them - hydrogen.

Hydrogen is made from water. Water contains two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.

By separating the oxygen from the hydrogen, a nearly infinite supply of energy could be made available.

Globally, research efforts are being undertaken to make hydrogen more economically and environmentally viable as current technologies require a tremendous amount of energy to undertake the separation process. Virtually the same amount of energy that would be available for use in the finished hydrogen fuel.

Takeji Takei, Fukuoka's vice governor, told the seminar on sustainable Asian cities in Bangkok yesterday the prefecture aims to become a global leader in hydrogen energy development by utilising local resources such as cutting-edge research and development at Kyushu University, and by making use of secondary hydrogen output from local steel mills.

"As part of this project we are aiming for the development of a hydrogen energy-based society through projects such as Hydrogen Town and Hydrogen Highway," Takei said.

Hydrogen Town is a project to install 150 home-use fuel cell systems in one region of the prefecture to collect real data from households that can be used in future product development.

"These systems are among the world's leading technologies and cut carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 30 per cent," he added.

Fukuoka Prefecture is located in south-western Japan. It is equidistant from Tokyo and Shanghai and connects with both in only one hour and 30 minutes. It's GDP in 2007 was approximately US$164 billion (Bt5.3 trillion), which is about the same as Hong Kong. Fukuoka Prefecture is considered to be the social and economic centre of western Japan.

Takei also told of how the efforts of the city government, the private sector and the central government had cleaned up the once heavily polluted part of the city.

"Once known as the Sea of Death, Dokai Bay in Kitakyushu City in Fukuoka Prefecture saw a vast improvement in water quality thanks to industrial wastewater restrictions, drainage system construction, and dredging projects carried out cooperatively by the government and the private sector," he said.

"Now, anybody can go and enjoy a tasty fish from the bay."

Jakarta

Covering an area of approximately 650 square kilometres, Jakarta is inhabited by over nine million people with an annual population growth of 2 per cent. Like other big cities, Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is facing various urban problems, worsened by growing pressures from climate change.

Transportation is the biggest challenge faced by Jakarta as it is the major contributor to air pollution in the city, said the city's governor.

The ratio between the number of private cars and public transportation on the road is 92 per cent to 8 per cent. To cope with the problems, Jakarta has imposed a total reform of transportation to relieve traffic congestion and supporting programmes to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.

A total reform step has been taken to re-order the transportation and public transit systems, especially to relieve traffic congestion. It is being developed within the framework of Macro Transportation Pattern of Jakarta. The system integrates four modes of transportation, namely buses, monorail, subway and waterways together with supporting facilities such as flyovers and underpasses.

In dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, it introduced a programme consisting of utilisation of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and bio-fuels for public transportation and taxis, enforcement for gasoline stations to provide alternative fuel, and incentives for alternative fuel users.

Others include imposing "Car Free Days" in particular areas where only buses are permitted, promoting "Bike to Work" and "Walking

for Short Distances" and Campaigning on Eco-driving, that is optimising the driving experience to reducing fuel costs and CO2 emissions.